The U District has well over 1,000 private sector units underway or recently completed, plus a few thousand dorm beds, one sizeable hotel, and the garage for the car dealership. Plus the campus itself, and the subway station. It's quite a bit.

That image from Gatewood photographer/pilot Long B. Nguyen captures in-the-works and relatively-new apartment projects in The Triangle area – in the foreground, the former “Hole,” now Spruce, which you might have noticed has risen above street level; in the background, newer projects including Link, which opened in 2011, and at the top-center of the photo, Nova (WSB sponsor), which started leasing in 2012. Those represent just a fraction of the 3,000+ apartments (by our ongoing calculations) that are under construction/on the drawing boards/newly finished, and some wonder why so much – here’s one answer: The vacancy rate remains low. According to this new report from Dupre & Scott – who specialize in “apartment market research and advice” – forwarded to us by a WSB reader, the “gross vacancy rate” in West Seattle right now is 4.5 percent. That’s lower than the Puget Sound-wide rate Dupre & Scott found, 5 percent.

In July, we heard that five new parklets would join the three already in Capitol Hill, Belltown and ID. We got some good news when we found out not only where the new parklets would be but that there will in fact be ten of them. Below, you'll find a map that locates all of the upcoming mini-parks, from the one going in front of Tin Umbrella Coffee Roasters in Hillman City to the one that'll go outside Molly Moon's Homemade Ice Cream in Wallingford.

Capitol Hill still has room to grow, but the easy sites are mostly gone. Today anything major needs to incorporate an old facade or two. In a couple years even the tougher large sites will be gone, and new projects will be limited to smaller lots. Plus the City might disincentivize larger construction.

That'll push rents up, and speed up the overflow into nearby areas. The 12th corridor will go nuts in the next few years. It's already started. One big one is the Juvie rebuild, which will shrink its current site and spin off room for hundreds of units.